Shrek is back! This time he's supported by many of your favorite characters too. Shrek the Third is graphically a very cute game. The story is told via a puppet show. It's not mind blowingly beautiful graphics, but it is quite fun to play and watch. The different levels provide you a variety of terrains to play on and enemies to work against, all of them well detailed. For an added bonus, you can spend your coins that you've found on different costumes for many of the characters if you want to change they're look (and get bonuses during gameplay).

The music and sounds are fun in Shrek the Third. You get to hear the voices of your favorite Shrek characters and their typical amusing jokes. The levels all have different music depending on where you're at, and the music just sounds like it belongs in that area.

There are a few different choices to play in Shrek the Third. Story Mode takes you through the game to rescue Princess Fiona and save the kingdom of Far, Far Away with the help of some friends, including Donkey and Puss. There's also the Princess levels where you get to play as Princess Fiona and Sleeping Beauty. Each level has up to five different quests for you to complete. After you've finished a level, you can go back at any time and replay it to complete something that you might have missed the first time through. Be warned though, no matter how many times you've seen the same cut scene or heard a villian's speech, you still can't skip cut scenes or dialogue.

As you're playing through Story Mode, you'll earn gold coins that can be used to purchase items at the Gift Shop. These items include character costumes, multiplayer maps, difficulty levels and more.

If you're bored with Story Mode or just want to play something different, Shrek the Third has five different mini-games to choose from. All of these mini-games can be played as one or two players.

Shrek the Third also provides a Multiplayer Mode where you can compete against your friends trying to destroy their towers before they destroy yours. You can play this on different battlegrounds, but it's still the same game.

Like most games geared toward a younger crowd, I just didn't find Shrek the Third to be very difficult. I completed the Story Mode in a few hours, and the mini-games just don't keep you entertained for that long. But since it does have a Multiplayer Mode, provided you've got someone to play with, you can make at least that portion of it more difficult. There's also two different difficulty modes that you can purchase in the Gift Shop, so it is at least possible to make it a little more of a challenge.

The controls in Shrek the Third are simple to use overall, with a few exceptions. The (X) button allows you to jump, and with some characters, such as Puss, pressing it twice will let you double jump. The (SQUARE) button is your normal attack, the (O) button is your strong attack. If you successfully do combos, and honestly I never could see a pattern as to how many, you'll see a triangle appear above the character's head that you're attacking. Pressing (TRIANGLE) at that moment will do one on the very many special attacks for the characters. Each character has several unique special attacks, but pressing that (TRIANGLE) button exactly when they want you to was difficult sometimes. The (TRIANGLE) button can also be used to pick items up when you're playing as Shrek or Fiona. You've also got a Fairy Dust attack that you can launch with the (L1) button, if you have enough fairy dust, and playing as Shrek and Fiona, (L1) + (R1) will launch the Ogre Attack if your fairy dust meter is full. That's the basics. There's several other controls if you're playing multiplayer.

One of my main complaints is the camera control, or lack thereof. Shrek the Third moves the camera for you, and for the most part, it works well. But there's always those times when you're looking for the last souvenir mug to complete a quest, or trying to get a better idea of what you're jumping across, etc., when you'd like to be able to move the camera around to see what's there.

Even with its flaws, I still found Shrek the Third a fun game to play. It doesn't take very long to beat though, so you might want to consider it a rental.